Home-school transitions: Revelatory moments of child wellbeing and observed cultural specificities among infant-toddler parents and teachers in the U.S. and Italy.

A study of teachers’ behavior and parental involvement in ECECs and its role in children’s well-being illustrated similarities and differences within and between two cultural settings (U.S. and Italy) and envisaged new perspectives of well-being in ECECs. The research on good relationships between parents and educators (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Epstein, 2001), early home-preschool transitions (Mantovani, Saitta, Bove, 2000), patterns and rituals of interaction in triadic settings (Fivaz-Depeursinge, Corboz-Warnery, 1999; Bove, Cescato 2013), and classic attachment theory, updated in light of cultural and gender specificities (LeVine, 2008; Di Fulco, Zavattini 2014) inspired and informed our work. The bases of this research include key tenets of socio-cultural, attachment, and ecological theories, gender specificities and the cultural nature of attachment, coupled with methodological approaches to studying complex interactions in “natural settings”. The framework for this study is participatory collaborative research in which teachers and researchers challenged taken-for-granted assumptions through participation in iterative cycles of reflexivity across three years. Multiple modalities made visible teacher practice through videos/audios/photographs of teachers’ classroom practice, focus groups, and discussions and researchers deliberations. Content, schema, and narrative analyses were utilized. Ethics committee approvals governed parents' and teachers' informed consent for audio, photography, video and discourse analysis. U.S. teacher-parent conversations appeared more rushed and focused on routines, whereas Italian conversations seemed broader in scope with more space and time for exchanges. Variations in adult’s roles and responsibilities regarding communication, interaction, and shared power and control with children and parents were found. More cross-cultural, multi-modal, situated research/professional development is needed in ECE.